Guest Opinion: VA needs lessons in customer service

Saturday

Jun 21, 2014 at 12:01 AM

The VA was born out of a necessity of post-war promises to veterans through a number of pension acts starting after the Revolutionary War and continuing through 1921 when the Veteran's Bureau was created by Congress to consolidate into one agency what many were doing.

Roger Guimond

“To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan,” are the words of Abraham Lincoln, who saw and had the foresight to try to do something about the wounds to this country during and after the Civil War. The motto would be adopted by the VA in 1959.

The VA was born out of a necessity of post-war promises to veterans through a number of pension acts starting after the Revolutionary War and continuing through 1921 when the Veteran’s Bureau was created by Congress to consolidate into one agency what many were doing.

For example, some cities, like Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., had hospitals for veterans who were injured. Things would really get rocking during and after the Civil War, with cemeteries and their maintenance, soldier asylums, and vocational rehabilitation being part of a responsibility to honor veterans who were injured doing their duty for this country. The president and Congress allowed, and rightfully so, this agency to grow into what it is today, with programs that include research and development, direct and indirect health care, life insurance, home loans, counseling, along with the aforementioned services, and many more.

The previously quoted motto of the VA is not what many of us see when we go to the facilities. It’s more like, “If we treat them like crap, they won’t come back.” Me, I’ve personally gone to the VA hospital at Davis Park in Providence and showed them my card and was turned away. Another time the doctor yelled at me and the next fella because we didn’t have X-rays, yet we weren’t told to go there. You could hear him yell through closed doors. I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise, that according to NPR, the Providence VA has the seventh-longest waiting list in the country to see a specialist. In my case, I was fortunate enough to have good health care and doctors that recommended the appropriate diagnostic instrument to ascertain the correct diagnosis.

The blame doesn’t fall on the VA or its cabinet post; it falls on all of our politicians who have known about this problem for decades now. President George W. Bush underfunded the VA for seven out of his eight years and I can only imagine what the other presidents and Congress have done. This is a leftover effect of the country’s attitude toward soldiers following the Vietnam War and the subsequent years afterward, where soldiers were treated as second-class citizens. There was poor treatment of soldiers in the service, and that treatment extended itself to the VA.

Finally, with women in the military, Abraham Lincoln’s words need to change. The pronouns “him” and “his” change to “them” and “their.” Beyond that, when going to the VA, we should be treated like when we go to Lowe’s and flash your card to prove you’ve been in the military to get the discount. “Thank you for your service,” with feeling followed by, “What can we do to help you today?”

Roger Guimond, of Freetown, is a school teacher who served three years in the U.S. Army in the 1970s.

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